Long time, no post

I haven't written anything on my blog for a very long time. It's been like 9 months. There has been a lot going on. I'm not going to get into it all, but I will summarize the last 9 months as quickly as possible.

Most of the year has gone by pretty uneventful. We have just been going about our daily life. During the summer, we had girl's camp, youth conference, cub scout day camp and boy scout camp. Youth conference was a pioneer trek, including authentic pioneer attire. They had to trek in the Texas heat in the middle of June. It was a good experience for them.

After all the camps were over, July brought be a mild MS flare. I lost the sensation and a lot of movement to my left hand. I had gone 25 months without a flare. I did my steroid treatment and I got all the function back in my left hand. I had the normal side effects of the steroids-high blood pressure, diabetes, thrush, and just general yuck.

August was a hard month, especially for Rachael. Her boyfriend of over a year left for his mission. He entered the MTC on August 20th. He spend almost every waking minute before that over at our house. The week he left was also the week Rachael started back at school and in dance. She was an emotional mess for the first week. He has been gone for 5 months now and she still has a hard time sometimes. I think what is hardest for her is that he is having a hard time, especially with being home sick. She has gotten to talk to him twice since he left. She talked to him when he left for Norway from the MTC and she got to Skype with him on Christmas too. He is also struggling with his testimony right now and wondering if his mission is really worth it, which is really hard on her. I think it would be better if she could just talk to him rather than relying on the written word. She might be able to talk him through this much better if they could actually talk.

In October, my mom and step dad visited. It was a pretty good visit. I kinda freaked out before the visit and cleaned fanatically. She didn't even criticize my house. It was nice to have it cleaned though. I took advantage of the bunch of energy I had and the motivation for cleaning to purge my house of all the clutter. The holiday season brought more clutter, but it is still better than it was.

The holiday season also brought me another flare. This one was really bad. I lost almost all the function in my right leg. I had to go back to walking with a cane. At first, I couldn't walk very well at all. I did steroids again, although this time they didn't work quite as well. I got the feeling back in my leg and some of the strength, but my entire foot is now paralyzed. We had to install a left food accelerator in our van so I could drive. It's a little bit of a pain because now I can drive any of our other vehicles, but I'm at least grateful that I can drive.

Rachael did really well with school in the fall semester. She got A's in both of her classes. She took environmental science and government. This semester,, she is taking Texas government and english. She will officially graduate from high school in May, although she has been taking only college classes for the past 2 years. She will do one more semester at ACC to finish out her basics, then transfer to Texas state. She wants to save as much as possible so she isn't in a lot of debt when she graduates.

The boys are doing well. They are both still in scouts. Jeremy is a Bear in cub scouts. Andrew is in boy scouts and is a 2nd class. We are working on lots of merit badges with Andrew and lots of various cub scout things with Jeremy. Andrew was able to graduate from OT right before Christmas. He was really excited about that. He has come a long ways. His sensory issues are much better and his handwriting is a lot better too. We still need to practice with him so that it flows better and quicker, but it is so much better than when we started.

Andrew is still enjoying his cooking classes. He goes back and forth about being a chef. He has plenty of time to make up his mind though. He likes his classes, but doesn't want to just experiment in the kitchen. He does like baking more than cooking. Jeremy really wants to start Ti-kwon-do. He will probably get to start during the summer. We wanted to start in the fall, but we just couldn't afford it.

Stan and I both have new hobbies. Stan got interested in doing wood working puzzles in November. He made some for all of our nieces and nephews. They turned out really well. He has more he wants to make. He got a lot of new wood working tools with his bonus. He may even look into selling them when he feels he is good enough. I've started quilting and making bags. The bags started off as just a way to have a messenger bag that was the right size and wasn't stiff and ugly like a lot of them on the market. I made one for Margie for Christmas as a practice and found that I LOVED making bags. I bought a quilting book while my mom was here. We found a bunch of quilting squares that Rachael and Beth started 10 years ago. I finished up that quilt top and put it together. Next, I made a roller derby quilt for Jessica for Christmas. It's a lot of fun. It's not as fast as bag making, but I still like it. I'm working on one for the VIR auction now. I have the top together and it is sandwiched with the batting and the backing. I still need to quilt it. I'm waiting on a part to my walking foot to help keep my lines evenly spaced. I see a lot of flaws with my quilts, but most people love them. I made one for someone at church this past week. It was my favorite one so far. We are even starting a quilting group at church.

Christmas was really good for us. The kids got spoiled as usual. It was fun to spend time with family and friends. We cut back a lot on the extras of the holidays because of my flare. It was ok though. I think it was one of our best Christmases ever.

I'm going to be opening a store on Etsy soon. I have to get my bag stock up so that I have things to sell first. I made my first sell bag on Saturday. I have a bag I have to make for my mom, then I can start making more store bags. I think I'm going to make baby slings, car seat tents, maybe a few quilts and lots of bags. I have a few quick and inexpensive bags I can make and some more complex bags, like diaper bags I'm going to make. There are lots of pictures of my bags on my Facebook page. I need to download them off my phone so I can put them in my blog.

I will try to blog more often. I know a lot of my family use this blog to keep up with me. I'm sorry I let you down.